DNA methylation is a reversible epigenetic mark regulating genome stability and function in many eukaryotes. In Arabidopsis, active DNA demethylation depends on the function of the ROS1 subfamily of genes that encode 5-methylcytosine DNA glycosylases/lyases. ROS1-mediated DNA demethylation plays a critical role in the regulation of transgenes, transposable elements and some endogenous genes; however, there have been no reports of clear developmental phenotypes in ros1 mutant plants. Here we report that, in the ros1 mutant, the promoter region of the peptide ligand gene EPF2 is hypermethylated, which greatly reduces EPF2 expression and thereby leads to a phenotype of overproduction of stomatal lineage cells. EPF2 gene expression in ros1 is restored and the defective epidermal cell patterning is suppressed by mutations in genes in the RNA-directed DNA methylation pathway. Our results show that active DNA demethylation combats the activity of RNA-directed DNA methylation to influence the initiation of stomatal lineage cells. Loss of active DNA demethylation increases DNA methylation at numerous loci in plant vegetative tissues; however, resulting developmental phenotypes have not been observed. Yamamuro et al. show that mutation of the 5-methylcytosine DNA glycosylase ROS1 results in overproduction of stomatal lineage cells in Arabidopsis.
Overproduction of stomatal lineage cells in Arabidopsis mutants defective in active DNA demethylation
Chizuko Yamamuro,D. Miki,Zhimin Zheng,Jun Ma,Jing Wang,Zhenbiao Yang,Juan Dong,Jian‐Kang Zhu
Published 2014 in Nature Communications
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- Publication year
2014
- Venue
Nature Communications
- Publication date
2014-05-30
- Fields of study
Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science
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Semantic Scholar, PubMed
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